


Barely Needed

by dairyme



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s01e04 The Good Soldier, Hand Jobs, Kink Meme, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, just buckets of emotional pain, not even porn really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-18 02:18:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1411306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dairyme/pseuds/dairyme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He hated Marsac for leaving him, and he hated him for coming back. </i>
</p><p>Fill for the kink meme prompt: "Aramis/Marsac - Desperate, confused and reluctant reunion sex."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Barely Needed

**Author's Note:**

> Continuing my tradition of writing people who shouldn't have sex having sex, and feeling really bad about it. I'm so one-note.
> 
> Wasn't going to post this as I'm not that happy with how it turned out, but it's so rare for me to finish anything I thought I may as well. Also just in case anyone gives a damn about this pairing apart from me.

Aramis had untied the rope joining them as soon as they entered the room. Despite everything, it felt wrong to treat Marsac like a criminal.

Marsac took off his gloves and dropped them onto the bed, rubbing his wrists and stretching his fingers as he surveyed the room distractedly.

Aramis watched him from the door for a moment, before closing and locking it decisively and crossing the room. He pulled out his handkerchief, dipped the end into the water basin and held it out to Marsac. “Clean that blood off.”

Marsac looked at him dumbly, but eventually took it on Aramis’s insistence. “I don’t know where…”

“Here,” said Aramis, taking the handkerchief back. “Where I hit you.” Marsac cracked a weak smile and Aramis couldn’t help returning it.

“Not going to apologise?” 

Aramis raised his eyebrows.

“No,” agreed Marsac. “I suppose not.”

“Hold still.” Aramis wiped the cloth gently over the bridge of Marsac’s nose. The injury was no more than a graze, cleaning it a matter of a few seconds’ work, but the burn of Marsac’s gaze made it seem longer.

Aramis tucked the handkerchief back in his pocket but didn’t step away. “You…” He lifted his hand back to Marsac’s face, ghosting the tips of his fingers over the cut at his lip. “You look like you’ve had worse fights recently.”

“Most days,” Marsac replied. His voice was a fraction above a whisper, and Aramis felt his lips move under his fingers. 

Marsac had not objected to the intimacy, and perhaps subconsciously Aramis had expected him to, to flinch from his touch, or at least show some hostility to the man who fully intended to leave him locked in this room. Perhaps that’s why he indulged the gesture in the first place: the assumption that Marsac would reject it. The assumption that one of them, should they find themselves in this situation, would reject it.

The way Marsac was looking at him, warm and attentive, was unexpected and achingly familiar. He should have stopped it then, dropped his hand and backed away, but he had forgotten - purposely forgotten - that he had once loved the way Marsac looked at him, and now the memory of that held him in place.

“I - thought of you,” said Marsac, and a slight tremble was audible in his voice, though he was clearly fighting to keep it out. 

Aramis knew how this went. He knew how to end it, and that he should, but to respond to such a confession with the required indifference felt intolerably cruel. He stroked his thumb against the line of Marsac’s cheekbone, an acknowledgement, nothing more. In that moment's hesitation, Marsac leaned forward and pressed their lips together. 

Aramis sank into it instinctively, turmoil momentarily swept away in the rush of adrenalin. He opened his mouth to Marsac’s, and felt him push closer. He felt Marsac’s hands on his waist, a possessive grip that caused a rush of arousal. 

He pulled back violently. “No,” he said, but it came out in a harsh sigh, unconvincing.

Marsac flinched, but swallowed and nodded. His hands still rested on Aramis’s waist, looser but unwilling to let go. “It’s just - to see you…” His voice was tight and faltering. 

“Don’t.”

“I’ve been…I didn't know.” He let go of Aramis with some considerable effort, but almost immediately, as if unable to help it, took hold of Aramis’s shoulders instead, lending weight to his words. “I didn’t know how it would be, to see you.”

Aramis had a thousand replies to that, many of which mirrored Marsac’s sentiments. There was spite in his choice not to voice them, he knew, but self-preservation too.

Marsac accepted his silence. He nodded again, and lowered his gaze. “Forgive me, Aramis.” 

The words were like a punch to the gut. Aramis had heard Marsac say them numerous times in the months after the massacre, in fevered dreams and indulgent fantasies, and it was crushing to realise that there was no satisfaction to be found hearing them in reality. That there was no consolation in an apology from a broken man. Instead he felt a rush of bitter anger. He was angry that Marsac wouldn’t look at him, that he was here at all, that he had changed, and that despite everything, he still made Aramis _want_.

He was angry still when he cupped Marsac’s cheek, and when he slid his hand into Marsac’s hair, fingers buried in knotted curls, and when he used the leverage to angle their mouths together. 

In so many ways he was nothing like the man Aramis had known; his ragged appearance spoke of a life far harder than that of a musketeer, there was a hollowness to his eyes that suggested years of poor sleep and the frayed edge of madness that comes with it, and his voice, the way he spoke, had lost the confidence and levity that had been so integral to his character.

But his eyes were still the same blue, the brief glimpse of his smile, though weaker, had still hinted at its former charm, and his hands - the feel of his hands, dragging down his back, was almost the same. 

It was close enough.

Aramis pushed Marsac back against the wall, the impact enough to force a soft grunt from him, and Aramis found some satisfaction in the violence of it. He kissed him like he was trying to bruise, and Marsac fought back. 

Aramis’s hand had found the buckle of Marsac’s belt, clinging to it with a fierce strength but not making moves to unfasten it until the feel of Marsac’s teeth closing hard on his lip shocked him into a decision. He undid the buckle swiftly and without grace. Marsac gave a quiet moan and let his head fall back against the wall. 

Aramis studied his face; the rapid flutter of the pulse in his throat, the familiar curve of his mouth, the creases at the corners of his closed eyes. It seemed suddenly unreal, like looking at a ghost. He had accepted, eventually, that he would never see Marsac again, know where he was, or even whether he lived. He had rebuilt his life on that certain knowledge, and in an instant it had collapsed. 

He hated Marsac for leaving him, and he hated him for coming back. 

At the same time, he was filled with a choking, desperate desire to pleasure him; to share something, as they once had, other than their status as survivors. His strokes were rough and efficient, but not inexperienced. If he knew nothing else about Marsac now, he at least knew how to give him this. 

Yet as he watched, Aramis felt suddenly separate from him - an already tenuous connection slipping away. Marsac's eyes were closed, rapt, but in what Aramis could not be sure. The idea that he might be somewhere else, with someone else, in his head, made Aramis feel slightly sick. With his free hand he tugged hard on the hair at Marsac’s nape. “Look at me.”

The action jolted Marsac back from wherever he had drifted with a gasp of pain, and he blinked at Aramis through a veil of confusion and lust, before hooking his fingers firmly between Aramis’s belt and coat. He hesitated, then pressed a brief, messy kiss and a muttered “Let me…” against Aramis’s mouth.

Aramis had not noticed quite how hard he was until the lust in Marsac’s voice shook him to the core. He altered his position immediately to allow Marsac better access.

Even clumsy with arousal, Marsac made impressively quick work of navigating his way into Aramis’s clothing. Aramis had teased him, once, joking that Marsac could get into another man’s uniform more deftly than any woman he had known. Marsac had laughed. Aramis could remember the sound of it. 

Marsac’s hand was hot on his skin. He groaned involuntarily, surprising himself and, judging by the intensity of his expression, Marsac. He pressed his face against Marsac’s shoulder, not embarrassed exactly, but feeling more exposed than he had been prepared for. He didn’t want this - this crushing, painful intimacy. The rawness of it panicked him.

The shock of pleasure though, the unfurling, long-dormant desire, was difficult to resist. He craved contact, tracing messy kisses down Marsac’s neck, tugging the scarf down in a partially successful attempt to access more of his skin. There were two long white scars there, over the ridge of his clavicle, that were new to him. He was struck with nauseous fascination; that he did not know what had caused these additions, and that he had once known Marsac’s skin well enough to notice them now. He covered them with his mouth, earth and sweat and gunpowder acrid against his tongue.

Marsac was clinging to him, the fingers of his free hand digging into Aramis’s back, and there was something terrible about it, the hopeless eagerness of it. Aramis realised he was clinging to Marsac in the same way. 

Marsac was quiet, quieter than Aramis was managing to be, everything sharply hitched breathing and harsh whispered words Aramis couldn’t make out. Aramis lifted his head to look at him, needing to see him. As soon as he could, Marsac was kissing him again, messy and fractured as he neared release. Aramis’s free hand found Marsac’s hair and pulled again, gentler this time, separating their mouths and allowing him to watch Marsac’s face, familiar and strange, as he came. 

Aramis could feel the beginnings of something like shame creeping in at the edges of his mind, and he raced to block it out. Marsac’s grip had faltered with his orgasm, and Aramis pushed his hand roughly away and replaced it with his own. He held himself against Marsac, as close as he could while still having room to stroke himself, his knuckles grazing the fabric at Marsac’s hip. He pressed his face against the crook of his neck, slightly damp with sweat, and breathed him in. 

He felt Marsac’s hand, warm and heavy, against his neck, holding him in position, and Marsac’s mouth against his ear, wordless, living breaths. Aramis gave in.

His release came quickly and forcefully, dragging a groan from his throat which was muffled against Marsac’s skin. When he came back to himself he realised he was breathing so hard he shook with it. He lifted his head, dazed, to find Marsac watching him with half-lidded eyes. He stroked the hair at Aramis’s temple with firm fingertips, the echo of an old affection. 

For a fast-fading moment there was relief, but it slipped from Aramis as the shame finally crawled into his veins. 

He thought Marsac might have wanted to kiss him again, and another memory forced itself from the back of his consciousness - long, lazy touches on warm, rumpled bedsheets - and he stepped back out of Marsac’s hold before it could settle. 

He offered his handkerchief again without comment or eye contact, then turned his back to rearrange his clothing. 

He didn’t turn around until he heard Marsac’s footsteps, a hesitant creak on the floorboards, and even then, he found he was unable to look him in the face. 

“Put your gloves on,” he said, finally. He caught Marsac’s questioning frown before dropping his gaze again. “I don’t want the rope to burn your wrists.”

Marsac straightened, his whole stance tightening. Then he picked up his gloves from the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress before pulling them on. 

Aramis took up the rope. Marsac looked at him, long and unreadable, before lifting his hands for Aramis to bind.


End file.
